


Kind

by Derin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helga Hufflepuff knew that she would be remembered as merely 'kind'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kind

They would remember that she was kind.

That did not bother her. It was, after all, true. Helga Hufflepuff had taken more than one student into her tower based not on their magical ability, but the fact that they had nowhere else to go. What bothered her was not so much being seen as kind, as the watering-down effect that descriptor had on one's other qualities. She had seen it before, over and over again, in her studies of revolutions and wars; people wanted to remember the glorious and he brave, so if they wanted a story forgotten, they told it so that it was neither glorious nor brave. They stripped the excitement from the conflicts, the agency from the participant's actions, and boiled them down to their most basic, unexciting motivations. And she, she knew with the kind of predictive power granted to one who has seen the story played out hundreds of times in campfire songs and history tomes, she would be kind.

She stared down at the grass under her feet. She had it on good authority that this was in fact the site of the little mountain town of Hogwarts, and an authority on the matter had not been easy to find – the massacre of the town, mere collateral damage of the fight between two competing wizards and their apprentices, had been neither glorious nor brave. There was no evidence left of the town. If she thought about it, she could just about see how the massive nearby lake might have been a crater from an errant explosion, how the trees might have stretched further along the meadow in which she stood before being burned back, but that could just as easily be her own imagination as any actual evidence. She sighed, and headed for the tent set up in the middle of the vast meadow.

The three inside all sat at a small table and didn't seem to have hurt each other yet, which was a good sign. Helga noticed that Godric Gryffindor spent more time eyeing Rowena Ravenclaw suspiciously than he did Salazar Slytherin. Godric and Salazar had a much more abrasive sort of rivalry; what had Rowena done to earn such suspicion? Helga shot Rowena a questioning glance, which she completely ignored. Salazar smirked.

“You all came,” Helga said pleasantly, taking her seat at the little table.

“Why,” Godric asked, “have you called us out to the arse of a mountain? We have perfectly comfortable homes already.”

“Clearly Helga felt that neutral ground might be a little better than one of your somewhat unstable towers,” Salazar pointed out, lips twisting into something that wasn't quite a smile.

“My towers are only 'unstable' to nosy little apprentices who show up and paw through them without permission,” Godric snapped. “Did that boy recover, by the way?”

“Believe it or not, your curses are perfectly counterable,” Salazar snapped. “I know you think that your spells are the pinnacle of magic, but loud and destructive isn't the same thing as effective.” But Helga noticed that he glanced at Rowena as he said it.

Godric noticed too, and burst out laughing. “You went for help!” he gasped between guffaws. “What did that cost you? A small library?”

Rowena raised a brow at Godric at that statement, and he shut up immediately, glaring once more at her with suspicion. Salazar glanced between the two curiously, but there was no answer in either of their faces.

Helga cleared her throat. “This sort of thing,” she said, “is exactly why we are here.”

“Yes, yes, wizards need to play nice,” Godric muttered, waving a dismissive hand. “You called us up here to have this conversation again?”

“I called you up here for a solution.” Helga laced her fingers together. “A partnership. An educational partnership.”

All three frowned at her.

“I don't understand,” Rowena said, when no explanation was forthcoming.

“A school, Rowena. I believe we should pool our resources and make a single school.”

Their frowns intensified.

“Helga,” Godric said gently, “you can't possibly believe that will work.”

“I can and I do. We spend a lot of time trying to teach our students, trying to keep them safe from each other, trying to scrounge the right resources and trying to fight without Muggles finding us, yes?” _Wiping out small Muggle towns that nobody will care about._ “How much more productive would we be if we cut out all that petty nonsense? There are big schools, proper schools, in other parts of the world; I've seen them.”

“Yes,” Salazar said, “but they are not based on four rivals with a history of trying to outdo each other for students and resources.”

“I don't see us trusting each other long enough for a venture like that,” Rowena agreed.

“None of us has the power to do this alone,” Helga pointed out. “But it's something Britain needs. Something we need. If we share resources, share teaching time, share goals, then we can raise a lot more students, be a lot more powerful, a lot more productive...” she glanced at Rowena, who had taken the diadem from her belt and was fiddling with it. That wasn't a good sign. Helga had once asked Rowena why she didn't just wear the diadem all the time, and Rowena had said that magical intelligence was a crutch, that it was better to exercise one's natural faculties as much as possible and avoid becoming lazy. But she always put it on before committing to any major decision. It looked like she was close to deciding.

“Imagine,” Helga pressed, “what we could do with access to a singular library.”

That got Rowena's attention. Her eyes fixed on Helga's. Like any witch or wizard, she used information as currency, but she was not at possessive of her own tomes as most – the work that truly interested her tended to require study and dedication that few others had time for, so her most precious tomes were useless in most hands. Helga knew that she would not be overly upset by her rivals seeing such things, so long as they didn't damage them. But there were definitely tomes in Helga's own library, and presumably in Salazar and Godric's, that Rowena would commit murder to get her hands on.

The other two looked properly apprehensive at the concept of sharing their libraries, so Helga pressed on. “Imagine,” she continued, “our students learning together, working together. No witch or wizard stands alone; imagine if they didn't have to, right from the start.” Salazar and Godric exchanged a look; their habit of poaching apprentices from each other was well-known. Helga pressed her final point. “Imagine a place of honour and prestige, where the young could come to learn, a school that will stand for centuries under our names, a singular monument to magical accomplishment.” Helga forced fire into her eyes, enthusiasm into her voice, as she spoke. Both of the wizards were smiling faintly at her, although they didn't seem to realise it. One thing she could count on, through thick and thin, was Godric and Salazar's pride.

But the moment didn't last long. Godric glanced suspiciously at Salazar. “How do I know this isn't a trick for you to get your hands on my students?” he asked.

“Salazar's libraries are somewhat depleted currently,” Rowena said thoughtfully. “If he wanted to render such sacrifices moot...”

“This is the first Salazar has heard of this plan,” Helga interrupted. “I approached you all together, here, today. He hasn't had the chance to plot.”

The three looked thoughtfully at her. Helga knew they didn't trust each other, not one bit. And they didn't trust her either, but she did have somewhat of a reputation. A reputation for honesty, for hard work, for not going back on her word and desiring peace and cooperation above petty rivalry and transparent glory. They knew that she knew her goals and she spoke them, unashamed, and stuck to them. That she leant her own strength to others who needed it without hesitation.

They knew that Helga Hufflepuff was kind.

“But,” Godric asked, “who would we teach?”

“I suppose all four of us would have to vet each student,” Salazar said thoughtfully.

Rowena sniffed. “If we do that, we'll have no students. There are perhaps two apprentices of yours that I would even consider for my tower, Salazar, and only if I were feeling generous.”

“I think,” Helga said, “that we should each pick our own students and bring them together. Maybe have a... a kind of maximum quota, so we're all using resources equally, until things get settled.”

“You want me to teach your orphans and Godric's riffraff without vetting them myself?” Rowena asked, raising a brow.

“And we'll teach your useless little bookmice in return,” Godric shrugged. “Sounds fair to me.”

Helga permitted herself a small smile. She'd won them over. Perhaps not on the details, not yet; but the biggest hurdle had been passed. At first, they would cautiously pool their most common and useless resources, each put in about ten students, test the waters. But Helga imagined a future larger than that. She saw a time, five or ten years down the track, when the others saw demonstrated the potential of witches and wizards they had overlooked, ones that she let into the school under her name, and relaxed their standards. When each could afford to add fifty students to the school because if they shared labour and began to put their more valuable tomes in the library for convenience's sake and hired some other teachers then they'd each be able to take more students than any witch or wizard could do alone. When the school would grow and they could each put in a hundred students, two hundred – when, someday in the future, every child in Britain born with magical potential would be able to learn magic. Not just the handful that fit the ridiculously stringent personal standards of whichever wizard happened to pass through their area, not just the smartest or the bravest or the most well-connected or ones with the most raw power or who knew the most languages or who were the best at fire-related spells or who worshipped the right god or were the right gender, but a future where anybody who could handle a wand, with hard work and dedication, could learn what they wanted to learn, and decide who they wanted to and what they thought was important for themselves.

She knew that the other witches and wizards looked down on what they called her 'lax standards'. She knew that people looked at her and saw that she used no power against them and concluded, therefore, that that power wasn't there. She had accepted plenty of students in the past who any number of other magic-users would have taken, but who sought her out because they believed in her teaching methods and ideals, and she knew that this choice hurt their reputation, that many saw her students as just a collection of rejects from other towers. But her students knew that their strength lay in their variety of skills rather than a commitment to a single ideal of excellence, in their ability to work with others rather than pointless elitism. And in her school, they would know the same thing.

Rowena Ravenclaw had settled her diadem on her head. The others watched, apprehensively, as she mulled the issue over and, eventually, nodded.

“I think we should try,” she concluded. “It should prove an educational experience.”

“Right,” Godric said, with a nod. “Then what do we call it?”

“Hogwarts,” Helga said instantly.

“Hogwarts?” Salazar frowned. “What is Hogwarts?”

“Nothing,” Helga said quietly. “Not any more.” Perhaps their Hogwarts would collect stories of bravery and glory that let the name live longer than the unfortunate town. Perhaps their school would be a great boon for Britain, or perhaps it would fail and live in story and inspire somebody else to try. Either way, it wouldn't be for nothing. The peace in their little tent was an accomplishment in itself, and Helga was willing to follow the project through and see just how far it could go. She just had to keep the others together. She would play the quiet one, the dutiful one, the trustworthy one. She would lay the school's foundation by hand if she had to, and try to keep the others working in the right direction as they pursued their diverse, high-minded goals.

She drummed her fingers on the table and smiled. It was a small price to pay for such a project, to be merely remembered as 'kind'.


End file.
